How to keep your data confidential

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Data-driven decision-making is the norm for businesses of all shapes and sizes, and it is creating a large business opportunity for organizations that are sitting on a massive pile of data. Additionally, data mining on multiple data sources which share certain identifiers can offer new insights with aggregation and can answer important business and research questions. For example, consider combining genetics research datasets with hospital medical data to better predict a disease or using aggregated data insights from multiple banks and government agencies to fight financial fraud which would go undetected in a single data source.

While the value of data mashups has been proven and widely accepted, few solutions offer the privacy and security to data owners that is required to realize the full value of their data. Many organizations can’t effectively monetize their data because of data privacy concerns and regulations around data usage. These limitations exist because the technology that would facilitate solutions is new, is very slow computationally, or requires a trusted third party which makes it impractical.

Private analytics with the Fortanix Runtime Encryption® (RTE) platform enables sharing and processing encrypted datasets from multiple parties. The datasets are only decrypted and analyzed within a secure enclave protected by Intel® SGX technology. Fortanix enables multiple parties to create a contract in software which will run in a secure enclave, receive keys to decrypt data, run analysis, and encrypt the result.

Private analytics with the Fortanix Runtime Encryption® platform enables sharing and processing encrypted datasets from multiple parties.

Fortanix provides fine-grained access controls for the datasets via the explicit contract which runs on the aggregated datasets. With our solution, the aggregate data is never exposed outside the secure enclave, and the contract is executed as agreed by all the parties, thus enforcing the data access controls from each party. Fortanix private analytics is an easy to use, efficient, and scalable solution which allows a large number of parties to create data mashups privately and adhere to regulations.

Additionally, organizations can monitor the lifecycle of secure enclaves that run the software contract, verify the remote attestation report for the enclave, tag geolocation, and create quorum-based approval for authorization to execute the contract. If necessary, it is easy for any of the parties to withdraw from the contract or forbid access to data by breaking the quorum.

The components of the secure private multi party analytics solution from Fortanix are as follows:

Fortanix Enclave Manager™ tracks the enclave lifecycle and provides features such remote attestation and geolocation enforcement for the enclaves executing the contract.
Fortanix Enclave OS™ runs unmodified programs inside Intel® SGX Enclaves and provides rich platform choices like C/C++, Python and Java for data contracts.
Fortanix DSM™ is world’s first unified key management and HSM solution that can generate, store, and manage your keys, secrets and certificates. It provides tamper-proof audit logs and quorum approval for performing crypto operations.

For more information on private multi-party analytics, please download our solution brief.